


Lives Torn Apart

by another_Hero



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Christmas, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-01 00:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20456111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero
Summary: @cinnaluminum said “David and anyone” going shopping at a big box store. "anyone" is Moira.





	Lives Torn Apart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cinnaluminum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinnaluminum/gifts).

> hey, remember when I said I’d write you a fic bc I wasn’t doing anything? yeah, I immediately got a Dramatic Important Email. whoops!!
> 
> you said “David and anyone” going shopping at a big box store. you know the “anyone” had to be Moira. 
> 
> idk whether you celebrate Christmas, but Johnny Rose sure does! thanks to the Rosebudd for the terrible-Christmas-song brainstorm. I'm not in the habit of titling fics with song lyrics, but in this case, the title is from Grown-Up Christmas List, which is also played in the fic and is my second-least-favorite Christmas song after Christmas in the Northwest, which cannot be played in the fic on account of my geographic assumptions about Schitt's Creek.
> 
> mentions of alcohol and suboptimal approaches to its consumption; some classism from the Roses; brief mention of suicide from a miserable Moira, though she's probably done worse in canon

There was music playing _outside_. David saw his mother inspecting the car radio, but even if it had worked, no one in their family would ever have selected a station that played “Grandma Got Run Over by a Raindeer.” He swatted her hand away and pointed to the speaker by the door of the Christmas World, facing into the parking lot.

Her attention, like his, must have gone from there to the decorations around the door, the harsh fluorescent lighting inside, the staff member standing in the snow in cheap synthetic knits and a bell. “Oh, David,” she said. “Surely we can do better than this. I believe we passed an abandoned gas station near the turn-off for Elm Grove.”

“No,” said David. “No, you can’t do this, because _I_ don’t want to go in there, and if you try to talk me out of it, we’re going to go back with no decorations for Dad.”

“David,” she said mournfully, “couldn’t you have brought someone more…willing? Surely Stevie would find—humor, in such a place?”

“First of all? Stevie would only try to make me buy all of the worst things in the store”—so, probably the entire store—“and second of all, she’s probably already drinking.”

“Would that we could switch places.”

“Come on,” David said, in what she would absolutely recognize as a naked appeal to her vanity but might still be unable to resist, “you and I are the only ones who might be able to find anything _remotely_ approaching acceptable in Christmas World.” He got out and went around to open her door; she put her arm through his grudgingly. In her shoes and hat, she was taller than he was. Taller and even more disgruntled.

“Merry Christmas!” said the elf at the door.

“Is it?” said Moira. David had thought the same thing—if he’d been alone, he would have said it—but now he flashed an apologetic smile at the teen with fake points on their earmuffs. There was no way they were paid enough to stand outside in the winter weather, and even at Rose Apothecary, which he liked to imagine catered to a more polite clientele, people were sort of monsters about this holiday.

They were barely in the door when Moira sighed and buried her face in his shoulder. “No,” she said, “I can’t do it. I won’t.”

David stepped forward, knowing it would tug her arm. He couldn’t imagine a version of this in the place of his store—for one, they wouldn’t have been able to fit half of the things inside. The shelves were packed with flimsy plastic; there wasn’t a single thing in any direction that he would have been willing to touch. They could find some lights, though. The regular lights were tacky when they weren’t woven together with branches—if you were going to have lights on a string by themselves, they should be large round bulbs—but he would get the plain white ones, no flashing, and put them…_around_ the tree, probably. He had a little faith that Patrick could make it hold together; that didn’t mean it would hold up anything else. Lights must be easy to find in a store like this—“Ew, _what_ did that song say?” He’d thought he was tuning it out.

“What?”

“If Mama meets Jesus tonight?” He could feel the amused horror on his face. “How the fuck do these people celebrate Christmas?”

“There’s a thought,” said his despondent mother.

“Um, no,” said David. “Okay, I’m going to need you to look at this trip as _research_.”

“Why on earth would I ever want to study the holiday practices of tragic suburbanites?”

“Just, like—pretend you’re trying to learn about a character.”

“One who’d come _here_?” Moira frowned. “She must be—yearning for something truly beautiful, but stifled by the—limited imaginations of her compatriots. And coming here, well. It only fuels her despair.”

“Okay,” said David, realizing he shouldn’t really have hoped for better. “But maybe she’s also trying to find something to make the holiday more fun for, I don’t know, her husband? Her family? Someone she loves.”

Moira sighed. “All right,” she said, “no need to wallop me over the head with it.”

David found the lights; he picked two strings of white ones. “So I was thinking we should stick to silver, for the color scheme?”

“Silver?”

“I mean, unless you like that tacky red—” With a little warning, he could have mood-boarded something more specific, bought bespoke decorations from his favorite vendors. How was he supposed to know his dad would try to institute family bonding time? Christmas had never been about family bonding before.

“No, no, you’re right as usual. All right, so this woman, she’s trying to find a single thing of beauty in her desolate life, and she has so few options that she comes to _Christmas World_—”

David might have preferred his mother be a bit quieter; there was no need for her to insult the employees, at least not before they left. But at least she was playing along now, scanning the shelves, trying to figure out what the woman would hit upon.

“Did this song just say _wars_ would never start?” His mom was nowhere nearby, but an employee looked up at him, and he looked back. “Who made the death playlist?”

The staff member in the Santa hat gave him an amused nod. That was ominous. He ran off to find his mother.

She was looking at some decorations of plain—well, they were plastic, but they were the sort of plastic that’s supposed to look like glass. Some were ugly angels or trees, but a few were twisted and tapered like stylized icicles. “It’s hardly—” she was saying.

“Of course it’s not.”

“But we could hang a few—”

“From what, though?” The tree wasn’t going to be an option.

“The lights,” said Moira. David was pretty sure that was a fire code violation, but the motel wasn’t his business. “In the window. Oh, David, don’t be so _dour_. Your father is looking forward to this. Do you want some mistletoe? I bet we can find some mistletoe made of plastic.”

“And we would want that _why_?”

“Oh, David, if I need to _explain_ to you the appeal of _mistletoe_, maybe you and Patrick should reconsider—”

David had been waving his hands in front of her for at least a third of that, and now he interrupted. “Why would we want it made of _plastic_?”

“Well,” said Moira, gesturing as though to say, _Look around_.

“Patrick brought the real mistletoe from the store.”

“Oh,” said Moira. “Well, did he also bring ribbons? Swags? Velvet?”

David tilted his head at her. “How do you think I decorate? Velvet? Is not back yet!” He could hear the shrillness in his voice, but why would she say things like this? Patrick had brought swags; David didn’t feel the need to mention.

“No need to act so _upset_, David,” Moira said. “It’s Christmas.”


End file.
